[E-voting] Minimum requirement to juge voting "technology"

[Timothy Murphy]

On Friday 10 September 2004 14:34, Colm MacCarthaigh wrote:

> > There are ways to cheat with the present system,
> > eg voting in the names of dead or absent voters,
> > but no-one thinks this justifies random re-counts.
>
> Random re-counts would make zero difference to those threats, so
> please - try not to be ludicrous.

Maybe "re-count" is the wrong term,
but it would be easy to check the names of some people who are recently 
deceased, see if their names remained on the electoral register,
and check if they had apparently voted.

It isn't done because common-sense tells us it would be a waste of time.
You might find a couple of votes out of 40,000 were fraudulent in this way,
but the chances of them making a difference would be negligible.

> > In the end you just have to say that if a reasonable person
> > has reasonable doubts then the matter should be looked into.
>
> What constitutes a reasonable doubt? Gut feeling? Prior opinion
> polls? What?

There isn't an algorithm for everything.
Have you read Theodore Roszak's great work "The cult of information"?
(This would be a very good text for the ICTE
as Roszak argues that the fact that something can be done with a computer
does not necessarily mean it is a sensible thing to do.
He has a lot to say about arguments like Cullen's
that e-voting is good because it is the "modern" way.)


-- 
Timothy Murphy  
e-mail (<80k only): tim /at/ birdsnest.maths.tcd.ie
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s-mail: School of Mathematics, Trinity College, Dublin 2, Ireland